----------
No one in Umu-Ọchịchịrị remembers the exact moment the village died.
They only remember the sound.
---
It began with the earth breathing.
Not shaking.
Not cracking.
Breathing.
Low. Slow. Wet.
Like something vast inhaling beneath the soil.
Chukwudi felt it first.
He stood beside his mother at the forest's edge, the night pressing down on him like a heavy hand. His bare feet tingled, nerves buzzing as if ants crawled inside his bones.
"Listen," she whispered.
"I hear nothing," he said, though his heart pounded.
She placed her palm on the ground.
"Then you are still listening with ears."
She pressed his hand down too.
The earth opened to him.
---
He heard screams that had not yet happened.
He heard bones grinding beneath roots.
He heard the names of the dead whispered backward.
"Ala… ala… ala…"
Mother earth was calling him son.
Chukwudi gasped and pulled his hand away.
"What is happening?" he cried.
His mother's face hardened—not cruel, but ancient.
"This village was built on a wound," she said. "Long before you were born."
---
The elders had lied.
Umu-Ọchịchịrị was not protected by the forest.
It was imprisoned by it.
Long ago, when greed split the land and blood soaked sacred ground, the people begged the spirits for protection. They made a covenant with something older than names.
An alụsị without mercy.
The Snake Mother.
Not woman.
Not beast.
But law.
"She was not always like this," Chukwudi whispered, memories that were not his pressing against his skull.
"No," his mother replied. "She was once chosen."
---
The sky screamed.
Lightning tore open the clouds, green and gold instead of white. Rain fell thick and warm, hissing where it struck the ground.
From beneath the village huts, hands emerged.
Not human.
Too many joints. Too many fingers.
The ground split.
People ran.
They tripped.
The earth swallowed them gently, like a mouth savoring food.
"Chukwu mee ebere! God have mercy!"
"Anyị anwụla! We are dead!"
"Ala egburu anyi! The earth has killed us!"
Snakes poured from every shadow, every crack, every doorway.
Not attacking.
Judging.
They wrapped around ankles, throats, waists—dragging screaming villagers into widening fissures.
Eze-Mmụọ crawled from the shattered shrine, bleeding, his sacred staff broken.
"You lied," he sobbed to the Snake Woman. "We kept the rites! We fed the earth!"
"You fed it fear," she said coldly. "Not balance."
She raised her hand.
The forest obeyed.
Trees bent inward, branches piercing flesh. Roots snapped bones like dry sticks. The night glowed with eyes—thousands of them—watching, remembering.
---
Chukwudi dropped to his knees.
"Stop it!" he screamed. "Please!"
The earth paused.
Just for him.
His mother turned, surprised.
"You feel them now," she said softly. "You hear them."
"I hear… pain," he said, tears streaming. "And hunger."
She knelt before him, scales rippling across her skin.
"Because the alụsị is not evil," she said. "It is unfinished."
She pressed her forehead to his.
And the truth entered him.
---
She had been human once.
A priestess chosen to guard the covenant.
But when the people broke it—when they buried children alive to hide their crimes, when they fed lies instead of sacrifice—the spirit took her body as punishment and warning.
She became vessel.
Guardian.
Monster.
And when she tried to leave, when she tried to end herself, the earth refused.
So she did the only thing left.
She gave birth.
---
"You," she whispered. "You are not curse nor punishment."
"You are release."
The ground beneath the village collapsed entirely.
Umu-Ọchịchịrị vanished into the dark, swallowed by forest and root and memory.
Silence fell.
Only Chukwudi remained standing.
The forest bowed.
The snakes withdrew.
The earth spoke one final time:
"Nwa anyi. Our child."
Chukwudi looked up at his mother.
"What happens now?" he asked.
She smiled—a sad, terrible smile.
"Now," she said, "the world will remember why it feared the old gods."
And somewhere far away, other alụsị stirred.